Endgame
by mleeph
Summary: Shikamaru expected that someone would die day his intellect failed him. But he never expected it to happen like this. And he never expected to be the one left alive. [ShikamaruTemari]
1. Prologue: Regret

**ENDGAME **

* * *

**"I am one who loved not wisely, but too well." -Othello**

* * *

_"This is what you wanted from me, isn't it?" she said, her face impassive. She quirked an eyebrow at him, ignoring the kunai at her throat and the robe-clad arm around her waist as though they were mere pieces of jewelry. "To win. To get me out of the way where I wouldn't intervene with your ego. Well, you did it. As always. I even have to say I was surprised." She laughed. " That's genius for you."_

_The robed Akatsuki tightened his grip on her, pressing the metal against her tanned skin, and looked vaguely surprised at the half-smile that quirked on her lips._

_"Almost done with your little speech, girl? Because I can always just kill this guy now," the tall figure growled _

_"Almost," she replied. "Just one more thing." She stared right into him then, her eyes stabbing him the way no one else ever could, reading all his darkest desires and picking the perfect words to use against him. It was his fault. He could do nothing for her. He could give nothing. Not even sound, because he couldn't form the words in his mouth to apologize._

_"Bastard," she said softly, and spit on the ground before him. "There. That's the only thing I ever taught you to do."_

_That night, he reported her as dead to the Godaime Hokage._

* * *

Shikamaru woke in an icy panic from dreamless sleep, sitting up so fast in the silent darkness that he saw spots on the black canvas of his eyelids. Nothing moved. In the window he could see the soft reflection of silvery moonlight on the tree branches, illuminating the folds of thin hospital sheets twisted around his legs. He leaned over and rested his forehead on his knees, gasping lightly. 

Drunk. That was the last thing he remembered. He had been very drunk.

Something brushed against leg that made a soft swishing sound, like fabric running over the cheap hospital pajamas he wore. Shikamaru frowned and held his hand up to the moonlight. A bandage was wrapped around his wrist, just where the artery ran close to the skin. He touched it lightly.

Drunk, and irrational too, apparently.

Shikamaru dropped his arm onto the mattress and stared in silence at the dark as though he could find the answers to his questions hiding somewhere in the sterilized corners of this room. He didn't remember what had happened, but he could guess:

He came home from the party drunk. It hadn't been a really crazy party, but he'd found himself at the bar for an extended period of time, his ANBU mask tossed lazily on the counter. When they had staggered back and opened the creaky door to the apartment building Shikamaru had told Chouji to fuck off, the way he had taken to doing recently. After that he wasn't sure, but he had probably walked into his room and found the handprint still pressed in the paint beside his bed, and lost it.

Yeah, he could envision what had happened.

Spit on the stupid thing. Maybe vomit too, he didn't care. And then stumble off to the bathroom for a nice razor before deciding a kunai would be more appropriate, and god damn it, he was sick of doing cliché thing.

He supposed he was lucky he'd landed here, now that the drink had worn off. But still, there was going to be hell to pay. He could see the report now as it must have landed on the Hokage's desk last night: _Medical notice: ANBU strategist Nara Shikamaru hospitalized last night due to severe arterial blood loss at the wrists. Suicide attempt is suspected. Patient received blood transfusion type A positive. See below for details. _There was no way he'd be out of here without some serious counseling. Not this time.

So now the record stood at two suicide attempts in two weeks, not a pretty figure. The first time he had thrown himself into the lake in a sake-induced stupor, only to shake off the effects of the drink upon hitting the cold water. No one knew about that; it had left no mark. But this time there would be a bloody room to bear witness to his madness, and a dead-obvious slash across his wrist he hadn't bothered to disguise as a battle wound.

This could not keep happening. One of these days his luck would wear off and he'd end up dead, his death attributed to a glorious fight in the tradition of the ANBU, where they never accepted that any member was less than heroic. That bothered him more than anything else, the concept of ending up as a PR device with a lie on his gravestone. Not that it wouldn't serve him right. But it would be ugly.

So Shikamaru did the next best thing. He walked up the window and leaned his elbows on the moonlit sill, pressing his palms against the glass. He expected he'd be locked in, because he could tell from the moon that he was in the south-facing wing of the building, where security risk patients were treated. But Shikamaru had seen a maintenance worker cleaning the rooms here once, and noted how he got around the alarms that were built into the system. If one jiggled the pane just the right way, careful not to let it bounce in and out, the frame's cheap pins would come loose as easily as lifting a shogi piece.

A short moment later, he was free, staring out into the warm summer night.


	2. Perfection

_When the Hokage told him he'd be assigned to an inter-village surveillance team, Shikamaru had been less than delighted. Diplomacy was not his strong suit, and he smelled politics in the assignment._

_"I promise you," Tsunade had told him, leaning wearily over her desk and allowing him an impressive, if unappreciated, view down her front. "You will be fine. The ambassador from Sand specifically requested the top strategist in Konoha for this team; they're not stupid enough to think it's anyone other than you."_

_"So they know me then?"_

_"Excuse me?"_

_"ANBU member's identities are top secret. The only way they could know who the top strategist in Konoha is would be if they knew me before I became ANBU."_

_Tsunade cocked an eyebrow at him. "Well, yes, then, they do know you. At least, the one representative from Sand certainly does, and I assume she passed that knowledge on to the ambassador."_

_"Troublesome," he sighed. "Temari should know better than to tell anyone such important information."_

_"You guessed so fast? You haven't seen the girl in years, Shikamaru."_

_"I... remember pretty well."_

* * *

Yes, he remembered. The way the two of them had sparred incessantly at her insistence, the way he had come to view her as a rival and a friend more than anyone else. It was strange. She didn't have his intelligence, not even close, although she was smart. But he was afraid to lose to her. Desperately afraid. And he could never place his finger on the reason why.

His friends had told him he was acting strangely, getting nervous if he lost a sparring match to her and irritable if he wasn't assigned to accompany the visiting sand-nins wherever they were going. Ever-observant Chouji had finally told Shikamaru flat out that he must have a crush on the girl, and he better admit it before they all went crazy living with him. Shikamaru had snorted and called him troublesome, flicking one of Chouji's precious potato chips off his lap and into the dust, immediately taking his friend's mind off the issue at hand. But when Temari was called back to Sand to take part in a high-level training session, and later promoted into the ranks of Sand's elite (and therefore invisible) shinobi, Shikamaru had wondered if maybe Chouji _had _been right, after all.

And then, with the assignment to the surveillance team, she'd come back. After five years, she just walked right back into his life as though she'd never been gone, neatly working herself into a position at his side and leaving Shikamaru scrambling to figure out what she meant by it. It was one of life's many little injustices that all Shikamaru's formidable battle-plotting talent would fall to nothing before this girl, all his rationality disappear with the thought of her fearsome smile.

And once again, the stress of his life was back in even greater doses. Suddenly _every _battle plan had to be flawless,_ every_ jutsu flowing and practiced, _every_ enemy defeated with ease. Shikamaru's notorious lazy expression never left his features, but beneath that bored appearance his mind was working overtime.

"That could have worked out better," Temari said dryly one day as they sat side-by-side on the hospital bench nursing bandaged limbs. Shikamaru's leg had been bent out from under him fighting a missing-nin from Mist, and snapped in the middle of the shin. The medic-nin told him he'd been lucky not to break the knee. Temari, for her part, had blocked a nasty blow with her fan and painfully twisted the muscles in her wrist. She hadn't even complained as she helped the third member of their team, a Konoha shinobi called Honda Yoshiro, carry Shikamaru back. "We'll have to do at least two missions without you now, do you realize that?"

Shikamaru slouched against the back of the bench. "I can't help it that you decided to jump in the middle of my battle, you know," he snapped back. "I could have handled him once I saw what he was doing."

"Yeah, right. By which time you were all out of chakra and desperately needed my assistance. I'm sure that would have worked well."

"Don't be so sarcastic. It's troublesome."

"What? You do it all the time!"

"You're a girl."

"And a better fighter than you are, considering how I had to save your sorry ass today!" Temari shot back, offended. She sighed deeply. "Your problem is that you always think too much of yourself, Shikamaru. You get into situations you can't get out of, for the sake of whatever honorable _thing_ you've got yourself hooked on today, and it makes me worry. I'm tired of it." She hooked her elbow over the back of the bench, staring at him. Shikamaru looked away.

"I don't need your help every time, Temari. I'm not a kid."

"So why did I have to help you today, huh?"

"You _didn't_ need to! You weren't even supposed to," he said, annoyed. "I'm intelligent enough to get out of whatever I get myself into."

"So you're better than me, is that it? The great Shikamaru can do what he wants without fear of death because he's just so very _smart_?" Temari was leaning forward now, glaring at him with one of those expressions he found deeply frightening, halfway between concern and anger. Well, that was stupid. He didn't need her concern. Not anybody's, but least of all _hers_.

"Yeah, that's what I'm saying!" he said angrily, grabbing his crutches off the wall and swinging his injured leg into a standing position so violently that Temari winced. "There's a reason they call me Konoha's top strategist and there's a reason I became ANBU so young. I'm not somebody for you to take _care _of, and you'd do well to remember that! Damn troublesome girl," he muttered as he positioned the crutch under his left arm. "I'm gonna go see if the Hokage's ready yet."

"No," said Temari suddenly, standing up and deftly kicking the crutch out from under him and she swept by. Shikamaru flailed and scrabbled at the wall for a handhold, cursing. "I'm going to go see if she's ready yet. See you." She slung her ever-present fan over her back and stomped out the door.

Shikamaru slumped back onto the bench and regarded the fallen crutch with a baleful stare. "Well, _that could have worked out better_, to quote a certain somebody," he said to no one in particular. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall with a weary sigh.

Just outside the door, Temari smacked the wall softly and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.


	3. Proof

"_It's good to see you," he said awkwardly, unwilling to search in the mossy darkness for a place to sit. Temari was crouched on a wet stone beside the filigree edge of the black water, her back bent in a delicate curve that belied the strength he knew it possessed. One finger trailed lazily across the glassy surface. _

_"Turn off the lamp," she replied by way of an answer. "It frightens away the fish."_

_He did as she commanded, and the gold highlights vanished suddenly from the lake, forcing him to hear rather than see the tableau before him. The ANBU strategist did not move for a long moment, letting his ears and eyes adjust to the night._

_"It's good to see you, too, you know."_

_"Hn."_

_"Sit down."_

_He smiled lopsidedly into the darkness. "Che...bossy as usual."_

_There was a splash, and Shikamaru could almost see her whirling around in his mind's eye, her ponytails whipping out so fast they might decapitate anyone in the near vicinity. He was almost fast enough to duck the spray of icy water that cascaded out of nowhere toward him._

_"Troublesome," he sighed, water dripping down the contours of his face and hair. He wiped his eyes with the back of one hand and wondered what had happened to the concept of not frightening the fish. "Hey... Temari?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"How did you pick me? I mean, for the surveillance team?" (What he meant to ask, of course, is _why_.) She did not answer right away, pausing just long enough for him to be aware of the lake water trickling past his left ear and down his neck. And then her words came floating out of the dim night: "I guess I wanted to see what you were capable of, you know? It's been a long time."_

_Shikamaru didn't miss the shrug in her voice._

* * *

"I don't want you playing any risky games today, Shikamaru." The Hokage sprawled forward on her desk in a pose more suited for late night bar party than a military briefing. But at least the lack of sake cup in her hand told him she was serious. "There were two casualties on the last mission including yourself, and you've been hospitalized once prior to that this month. And this mission is going to be enough like playing with fire without having you throw oil on it." 

"I don't intend to," Shikamaru told her stiffly. "These are Akatsuki we're dealing with; I'm fully aware of that."

"And do you also understand what is at stake politically?"

"Yes."

Tsunade snorted, not especially softly. "No, you don't. You are a genius, Shikamaru, but only at interpreting the mentality of enemies. Diplomacy is rather more my forte," She paused, eyeing him appraisingly. "And I can tell you that this mission is more important than you realize. Leaf and Sand villages have been pooling our resources and intelligence for months to figure out where their meeting is taking place. But the final strike force is mostly Leaf nin, so the burden of success or defeat rests with us. It's up to you to capture the Akatsuki party and prove that Leaf is a reliable ally."

"...And I can't be losing any Sand shinobi, either, am I right?"

"Correct."

Shikamaru cracked the bones of his neck experimentally, earning a reproving look from his superior officer. "You know the Sand delegate is always my top priority," he said blandly. He ignored Tsunade's look of polite skepticism. "I make only the most cautious decisions concerning her safety."

The Hokage muttered something unintelligible under her breath, and slid a heavy folder out from under the stack of books on the corner of the desk. "Be that as it may," she sighed. "Anyway, here are compiled reports." She flipped the folder expertly open and laid out a sheaf of neatly printed documents. "According to our people in the northern provinces there's been an increase in activity around these two towns here, indicating that the Akatsuki may have made a contract with the clans who control the primary economic ventures in those regions. So we put out a call to watch for the identifying apparel of the Sakanagumo family, who may or may not actually be involved..."

The ANBU's best strategist listened carefully to her dissertation, but his mind was already on the ground of the mission. This time he would have a plan, the perfect plan. Shikamaru didn't like to think of himself as arrogant, but also he wasn't without pride, and he knew it could be done-- by him, and only by him.

This time Temari would have no cause for doubt.

* * *

**Sorry for the impossibly long time between updates. I kinda forgot about this fic. ; I'll try to have more soon...**


End file.
